BROOKINGS – For its summer offering, Brookings Community Theater is bringing to the Brookings High School stage a production that offers an unusual mix of elements that are not ordinarily thought of as going well together.

But that’s what “Little Shop of Horrors” is all about.

BCT presents “Little Shop of Horrors” July 21-23 and July 28-30 in V.A. Bell Auditorium. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for seniors and students and are available at Brookings Book Company, The Optical Shop and at the door one hour before the show and online at www.BrookingsCommunityTheatre.org.

BCT bills “Little Shop” as “a delectable sci-fi horror musical with an electrifying 1960s pop/rock score by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.” For BCT advocates, the whole business is brought together by director Mike Thompson, a cast of veterans and newcomers, a pit orchestra and music under the direction of Kathy Winghart, and choreography by Olivia Davis.

Thompson knows his way around the BCT boards. He has been with BCT since 2009. He directed two plays in 2016: The fall show in October, “The Hollow,” an Agatha Christie mystery, and the winter show in December, “It’s a Wonderful Life Radio Play,” by Joe Landry. Last year Thompson became vice president of the BCT board.

For mature audiences

For Thompson, the challenge in directing “Little Shop” is that it’s a musical.

“You have to have a little bit of knowledge of everything and then you have to rely on your music director. You have to make sure that you cast the right people and I think that we’ve done that,” he explained.

“We’ve cast an amazing group of people that can sing. It’s going to blow you away when you hear it.”

The setting for the play is a Skid Row floral shop owned by Mr. Mushnik and his young assistant, Seymour, “whom he picks up off the streets and takes him in, kind of adopts him, so to speak.”

From an elderly Chinese gentleman who provides him with flower clippings, Seymour acquires a “strange, weird and interesting plant.” Somewhat by accident, Seymour discovers that the plant he names Audrey II, after his love interest, Audrey, who works with him at the flower shop, thrives on human blood.

Thompson explains that as Seymour feeds Audrey II a blood meal “by poking his finger, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and he ends up having to feed it something more substantial.”

That’s as much as the director wants to disclose about the plot. A key to enjoying “Little Shop” is the suspense of not knowing what’s going to happen next. But the audience will learn that Audrey II has what the playbill calls “a soulful R&B voice, a potty mouth, and an unquenchable thirst for human blood.”

Thompson does note that “Little Shop” “is definitely for mature audiences. There’s some swearing and there’s some innuendo; but you get innuendo in some of the cartoons that you see on TV nowadays.”

The plants for Mr. Mushnik’s flower shop were provided by Brookings HyVee and Medary Acres Greenhouse. HyVee also helped sponsor the production.

Veterans and rookies

“We’ve got a lot of new people,” the director said. “That’s what’s fun about this whole thing. It’s kind of nice to get that fresh perspective on things.”

One of the new people is his son, Conner Thompson, 17, a senior at Brookings High School this fall.

“My dad was really pushing me to get involved in the theater,” Conner said, “because he’s been involved in it for years.” He plays what he calls a “plant puppet.” In his case he’s Audrey II. It’s a hot role, literally, being costumed as a plant.

However, he said, “I think it’s fun.”

Mike Thompson noted that a major key to a good production of Little Shop is the music. Thomson calls the five women with singing roles – “the Greek Chorus” – “the driving force of the play as it were. They kind of steer the play in the right direction.”

A key singer, who has been away from BCT for a while, is Moiria Curry, who plays Crystal.

“This is my first show in a decade with BCT,” Curry said. “I did a show 10 years ago – ‘Voice of My Own.’ This show’s my favorite show on the planet. It brought me out of retirement.”

While she hasn’t seen Little Shop on stage, the 1986 movie of the same name is a family favorite. Curry is impressed with the dedication of the cast she works with, rehearsing four evenings a week for a month or more to bring a ready-to-go production to opening night. She herself keeps busy: as a stay-at-home mom with four children; roller derby skater for the Midwest Maidens; and with community projects.

In the singing role of real-girl Audrey is Jessica Weiss, appearing on a BCT stage for the first time. She hails from Wilbur, Minn., where they had an “awesome community theater program” in which she participated.

Weiss said that for her role, the voice of Audrey was a real challenge.

“She’s got a very distinct speaking voice; it’s very high-pitched and it’s a very thick, kind of East Coast accent. Trying to read through the script and figuring out what lines I need to say a certain way and that kind of thing has probably been the most challenging,” Weiss said.

Playing the lovelorn (for Audrey) and hapless flower shop assistant Seymour is Craig Long, a veteran in several BCT summer musicals of the past three years.

“This is the biggest role that I’ve had in quite some time,” he said. “Reacquainting myself with the scope of this role was challenging. It’s a great part.”

Winghart, director of the Brookings High School orchestra, directs and plays music at the same time,“coordinating everybody that’s going to be in the pit.” Playing piano, she will be joined by five other musicians on clarinet, drums, oboe, alto and soprano saxaphones, trumpet and bass.

This is Winghart’s sixth BCT production; add to her theater resume productions in college and at Brookings High School.

Of “Little Shop,” she likes its “’50s and ’60s rock music. It’s really fun. It’s been a joy to work with. There’s a lot of dialogue, but most of the story is told through the music.”

Come out. See for yourself. Enjoy. And check out the neat special effects evident in Audrey II as she grows from small, to medium, to large – and with a personality unlike that of the Jolly Green Giant.

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.